Most Useful

Here are some more articles I’ve written on Medium. The first one been read by over 17,000 people! The second is a rewrite of an article that appears earlier in this blog, and on Medium it’s Part II of two articles, so if it interests you, you might want to check out Part I. Choosing […]

I’ve been writing quite a bit on Medium. Here are some fairly recent popular articles (Medium calls them “stories”): Your Primary Relationship is Your Primary Relationship Trust vs. Threat Your Relationship is an Ecosystem If you search for my name on Medium you can find others. Thanks for reading!

This is all familiar ground for experienced couples therapists, but Michelle Weiner-Davis puts it all together very nicely in this TED talk. Notice especially the examples of how the conversation can go wrong vs. how it can go right, and the potential reversal of desire and arousal.

Recently published on Psyched in SF: Understanding Men, Part 2: The influence of male values on our society, and how to create an atmosphere in relationships with male-minded people that encourages empathy and emotional connection.

Here’s a new article for Psyched In SF: Understanding Men, Part 1 I’m going to be writing more now for other sources, so you may be seeing more links here to those places (rather than the text of the article itself). And in a similar vein came across this which totally fits: About Men From […]

One of my favorite quotes (from Pete Pearson) is that good communication is an unnatural act. And unfortunately, as I have to remind my couples all the time, technology is conspiring with our instincts for connection, but at the cost of disconnection from the person in front of us. Texting, email and other social media […]

I love it when my clients ask a great question. In years of doing couples work nobody has asked me that directly…until a few weeks ago. Of course there have been variations like “How can we feel closer?,” or the sad antithesis: “How did things get so bad?,” or the common: “Why do we just […]

The Ambiguity of Language Partly because people who get more caught up in right and wrong tend to be engineers, accountants, lawyers, and others whose work is fairly “rule governed,” in this article I’m going to lean towards the technical side for some of my analogies and comparisons. Language is often more imprecise than we […]

Meet Psychologist Dr. Solley

San Francisco Couples Therapist

Dr. Robert Solley is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in neuropsychology and couples therapy in San Francisco. Earning his PhD from the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley, Dr. Solley has been licensed for over 20 years. He has trained and worked in such diverse settings as Children's Hospital in Oakland, California-Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, and is a Staff Therapist with the Couples Institute in Menlo Park. Dr. Solley has taught masters and doctoral students as an adjunct faculty member at Alliant University, The Wright Institute, and the University of San Francisco. Currently he sees 15-20 couples a week (as well as some individuals) in his private practice in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.